Some days,
Caterpillars will feel ugly
They will see their cousins
And view the wings
Painted like a spectrum

Just like the story
Of the ugly duckling
Who felt he wasn't good enough
Who felt he didn't belong
But turned out to be
This magnificent thing
Who stunned not only others
But himself

Adults will never admit
To having been told
To just "**** yourself"
They will never admit
To having said that
To someone else

When you were a child,
You were told you were a mistake
But sweetheart,
How can something that
Breathes life and creates beauty
Be a ******* mistake?

How can something that
Has its own opinions
Its own morals and loves
How can that be a mistake?

Look your mother in the eye
And tell her the words
She never heard growing up
"I love you
It's okay
You did okay
You are okay"

If you **** yourself,
Then how will you know
The way you will look
On your wedding day?

You will never be able
To see yourself in your gown
Or in your suit
Happy and thriving and loved

How will you be able to
See yourself grow old and grey
With your true love next to you
Or, even alone,
But surrounded by true friends

You tell yourself
That you are different
For being that one friend
Who hasn't gotten married
Or had kids
Or any of that stuff adults do

Some people are just
Not made to love
And that is okay!
You will still be loved,
Regardless

If you die tonight,
Then how will you see the morning?
Put down the ticking time bomb
Of your ultimate demise
And read this over
And over and over and over and over
Until sunrise peaks
Behind the silver clouds
And be proud
That you lasted another night
That you did not fall
Into their traps

Step outside
Let the wind
Chill you to your bones
Feel something
Other then numbness
Scream if you have to
No one is awake
Just breathe
And live

There are some things
I never said
And some
I have not forgotten about you
They are as follows

1. I have not forgotten
The way your lips parted
When you would say my name
As if it were some prayer
And not some messily scrawled pencil work
In the back of a stall

2. I have not forgotten
The way you would hold me
When I told you I wanted to die
When you would sit with me
And see that I was a monster
That there was a beast
Hiding inside of my head
And no amount of love
Could rid it

3. You were like Beast
And I was like Beauty
Maybe it was the other way around
Maybe you were the one
Who brought lights to others
And I was the one who drowned

4. Not everything about you was bad
You taught me
What love feels like
What true love can do
How,
Despite everything a person feels
Love can make you or break you
And you broke me

5. I told myself
I would not have another relationship
And I lied to myself
I do not know how
To be serious anymore
All I can do is
Play around
And cheat myself

6. I couldn't think of anything else
But the way your hands curved
The way your knuckles shouted
My name when they were curled
Around my neck

The way your mouth
Formed my name
On my neck
And created a bruise
That lasted for centuries

The way you pressed
Yourself against me
And whispered
"I love you, so much"

7. Do you still love me now?

8. I never told you
That I started smoking
So I could burn your scent
Out of my lungs
And taste you in my mouth

I never told you
That I started drinking
So I could forget you
And forget myself

I never told you
I started acting out
So you could pay attention to me again

I never told you
Just how much
You ****** me up

9. You were the name I moaned out
On restless Saturday nights

You are no longer that name

10. You taught me
How to fall in love with strangers
So much that
I saw their tiny little flaws
And still thought they were beautiful

I could see
The flowers growing from
Their broken and withered body
And I thought to myself
Thank you,
For teaching me how to love
But also ******* me over

1.** When you would see him,
You would think he was the most beautiful creature
But when he kissed the palm of your hands,
They left a trail of fire that burned
A hole the size of the Milky Way

You convinced yourself each night
After the last person,
You wouldn’t fall back in
For writing creates the same pain
As loving someone does

2. You kept me tucked between your lips
Like a tab in a worn book that
You can flip back to when you are bored and lonely

3. You taught me how to keep
My words in my head
Stuck to my tongue
Like sandpaper rubbing back and forth on metal
To pick my words carefully
To filter my thoughts out

4. You were the equivalent to
An ugly red infection that
Needed to be surgically removed
But instead was picked out with a fork

5. He does not love you
He is not your Prince Charming
He will not come for you in the pouring rain
Stop waiting.

6. He sees you as a child
With more growing to do
You were a ****** up enormity
That needed to find its place

Years beyond your age
But sometimes you would question
Who the older one truly was

7. Two beings on different trails
One was a star
And the other was a tree
Deeply rooted to its morals
And the other flying around freely

He bought you things
Without being asked
Visited you
And even kissed you
He thought you were beautiful
But he stopped
And he left
And he will not return

8. He does not worry for you
He did not think twice when
You told him you wanted to **** yourself
He did not say anything
But stare
When he saw your scarred arms
With all the past experiences
Each one whispering
A new story
A new person
And a new future

9. His eyes
Were full of life
While yours
Were dull and
He knew then,
What monstrosity you were inside

When he said
“An outlet for what is upstairs”
You translated it as
“An outlet to get away from me”
“An outlet to leave me alone”
“An outlet to
Cover up the past
And patch up the future”

10. He burned you
Out of his life
Like a cigarette ****
Against a wooden table
Or a glass tray
That he found lost in his attic
And you did too
It took time,
And lots of nights spent crying
But you did,
And you are free.

Growing up, you wanted to be a princess. But you wanted to be your own hero. Insisting all you needed was a bit of love

They say, "No, a princess cannot wear a crown and suit"

Handed dolls, cars taken away

They say, "Oh, that's so gay!"

They say, "Hey, ******"

They say, "What a ***"

They say to grow up. Be a lady. Get some manners; grow a pair

But then you do, and they stare. Bonded with tape; compressed, hidden away from sight

Zachary,
Tucked away in your pocket. Except that pocket is your skin, your bones

They say

If you are one of us, then do this. But you cannot. There is not enough testosterone; not enough muscle

So they laugh. Say you are weak, and a liar

They say

This is a phase. You will regret it. It is simply not possible

Zachary does not exist. He is not real. You are just young

You do not know

You are a female. Despite your protests, they insist anyway

They say, "Have you seen it? Is it a boy or a girl? Is it gay or straight? It's an it. An it. It's a monster."

They say, "I bet I can make you straight" with their glint in their eyes, that have already lowered you, to that of dirt. And then, when you get hurt, it's your fault. For tempting them, for being yourself, not
theirs

They say
You are nothing

They say
You will get hurt. And they are right They do not lie, but they are dishonest

Whispers pass you. Pointing from children, and mothers shielding their eyes
"Don't look at that, it'll make you sick"

Adults of authority, giggling and taunting
Hushing each other, to no avail
Putting you in classes where you don't belong
Making you cry, when they do not listen
The urge to scream, "I am human, too. I deserve comfort"
Anxious to speak up, fear of being dismissed

People misgender you
Call you a girl, if you are a boy
And vise versa
Call you sir or ma'am, when you are neither, or both
You are afraid to speak up. Say, "No, that is not me"

Parents who don't understand. They all begin that way
Not believing, and blaming themselves
Educate them

Zachary is here, standing on his toes
Wishing,
To be seen
To be acknowledged
No longer a scab you feel the urge to pick;
No longer skin you feel the urge to tear
Zachary is here
He has always been here
He is not an it

The bells are tingling, crescendoing impatiently, creating a ruckus of taps within your chemically imbalanced head

Your hands shake with all the untold words, bottled up within your throat and unable to explode like a volcano of molten rock until people stand in shock and admire not the destruction but the beauty

You enclose yourself into a small corner as soon as their is an unknown force that you cannot adequately deal with and hope they leave soon so you can lower your defenses just a bit; for you are afraid of leaving the house and being stared down until you run away like a kicked dog with his tail tucked between his legs

You apologize for things you didn't do, not out of guilt but because you feel obligated to

For you see, when you have social anxiety it is hard to communicate with anyone, even yourself. You live in fear of saying the wrong thing, of messing something up, of splitting apart like an egg cracked in the middle and all the yolk spilling out beyond your hands reaches

When you were a child, you would ask the closest person to hold your hands and count to ten, and that closest person was usually yourself

Your heart flutters like a butterflies  wings flapping wildly in a storm

Your breathing shudders as you try urgently to not shed tears not from sadness but from fear

Some describe social anxiety as naught but a tiny fear when in reality it is more like treading open water in the middle of nowhere with no help in sight, and the waves threaten to push you down until you are far out of reach

Some imagine people with anxiety as being introverts, when in reality it also happens to extroverts. It happens to all races, genders, and sexualities

When you live with anxiety, it is all you can think about. You strategize how to survive each obstacle of the day

One thing you can tell them to do if you cross paths and you notice their shallow breathing and their shaking and sweaty palms is to just

Breathe.

We, as women, are told to be a certain thing

We are told to do this
To not do this
To get in the kitchen
And make you a sandwich

Pushed to have the figure of a goddess
Or, close to a Victoria Secret model
Without being able to work out
Because that would take time from house chores

Molded to have perfect manners
And never speak, unless spoken to
Always say "Yes" and "Please"
To not have thoughts of your own
Spend your time at home,
But have the knowledge of a scholar

Demanded to get married
Before you even finish college
And have children just as quick

As men,
We are told to bear all responsibilities
Expected to be the moneymaker
And have a job where you go each day

You are the protector
Used as a shield
And then discarded just as easily

Made to have a Calvin Klein body
With matching biceps
When you have different,
They look at you as if you are strange
Another species

Forced to think and act one way
To match the norms
Think about *** and *****
Or which party you'll be going to next

Now tell me,
Who truly has it harder?

You are under my skin
Crawling through my veins,
Enclosing yourself in my ribs
Digging out to the surface
You are the wind in the trees,
The dying leaves as they fall down
The breaking of hearts
Under cold December nights
You are the shrieking
On long insomnia nights
You are the thought that keeps me awake
Lying under the pale moon sky
And counting the stars
That will create a nebula
You are the ache in my bones
Breaking from the pressure
Of staying alive
You are the dust in my body
Coiled around my heart
Squeezing the air from my lungs
Trapping yourself in the corners of my mind
Burning yourself into my memory
You are in everything
And nowhere at all
You are everything
And nothing at all